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In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance - Softcover
Synopsis
In its interpretation of Latin and Greek culture, Christianity contends that Satan is behind all classical deities, demi-gods, and spiritual creatures, including the gods of the household, the lares and penates. But Armando Maggi, an expert in Renaissance demonology, argues throughout In the Company of Demons that the great thinkers of the Italian Renaissance had a more nuanced and perhaps less sinister interpretation of these creatures or spiritual bodies. Through close readings of Giovan Francesco Pico della Mirandola, Strozzi Cigogna, Pompeo della Barba, Ludovico Sinistrari, and others, Maggi reveals that these demons speak through their sudden and striking appearances-their very bodies seen as metaphors to be interpreted. But the core trait of these spirits is compassion, and sometimes their odd, eerie arrivals are seen as harbingers or warnings to protect us. It comes as no surprise then that when spiritual beings distort the natural world to communicate, it is vital that we begin to listen. "Maggi gives us an original and penetrating interpretation of Renaissance demonology, with a brilliant analysis and with a challenge to the reader for deeper thoughts on a theme that attracts scholars, but has still some new views. -Michaela Valente, Renaissance Quarterly
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Review
"Armando Maggi has a genius for displaying the astonishing range and character of Renaissance demonology, far from its earlier exclusively Satanic character. In this marvelous book Maggi considers angels, demons, satyrs, incubi, succubi, and other 'familiars' in the work of sixteenth-century thinkers in terms of both their natures and their functions of teaching, warning, protecting, and loving humans. Identified in the distant pagan past and transformed by the incarnation of the Word, they even participate in the process of human salvation. Far beyond thought or speech, Maggi's subject is the mayhem caused by an explosion of spirits, some enemies, all familiars."--Edward Peters, University of Pennsylvania
"In this book, Armando Maggi offers a series of very original and provocative readings of important Renaissance treatises that discuss different facets of the 'familiar spirits.' Each analysis is thought-provoking and enlightening, and often entertaining. But then, in an act worthy of a Renaissance magus, Maggi interconnects all his different readings into a completely new and original understanding of the essence of demonic spirits and their relations with humans. Weaving together disparate discussions of demons, language, identity, and desire, he uncovers for his readers a Renaissance in which familiar spirits were not marginal figures, but the very embodiment of what it meant to be human."--Richard Kieckhefer, Northwestern University
"Armando Maggi's "In the Company of Demons" is a major contribution to the redefinition of Renaissance demonology as a protoscientific discipline, comparable in rigor to Renaissance anthropology, psychology, anatomy, and physiology. Maggi brilliantly demonstrates how Renaissance demonologists 'read' the demonic body and its interactions in search of a positive role for demons. By interweaving Classical pagan lore with medieval Christian ideas about the existence, nature, and habits of evil spirits, the Renaissance sought evidence of divine compassion and human salvation among beings traditionally spurned by theologians. Essential reading for anyone needing to understand Christian--and post-Christian--demonology."--Walter Stephens, The Johns Hopkins University
"Maggi gives us an original and penetrating interpretation of Renaissance demonology, with a brilliant analysis and with a challenge to the reader for deeper thoughts on a theme that attracts scholars, but has still some new views."
"In his new and fascinating book, Armando Maggi tries to understand the strange world of Renaissance demonology without dwelling on its obvious absurdities. . . . His aim is not to psychoanalyse but to sympathize, and his method is to enter into the spirit (so to speak) of this strange world."
About the Author
Armando Maggi is professor of Romance languages and literatures and a member of the Committee on the History of Culture at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including Satan's Rhetoric and The Resurrection of the Body: Pier Paolo Pasolini from Sade to Saint Paul, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
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- PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 0226501299
- ISBN 13 9780226501291
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages257
- Rating
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